Life Imitating Life (Davis pulls a Felarca in their elections, and then lets candidate back in)
UC Davis just had their student elections, and just like here, a winning candidate was disqualified. The Senator in question was Rob Roy of the Friends Urging for Campus Kindness party, and he was DQ-edfor not turning in a proper receipt. (Yes the acronym is on purpose. From what I can tell, they seem like the SQUELCH! Party of Davis.)

After a vocal uproar about how unfair this was, he was requalified, and ended up as the top vote getter in the election. I understand that UCSD had a similar incident a couple years ago, with one of the major parties being disqualified, and then let back in. This leads me to the conclusion that rampant illegal campaigning shall continue here at Berkeley, as any sort of enforcement seems extremely unlikely.

My only thought is that a system could be put in place that would find a way to punish people short of disqualifying them. If the only options are no punishment whatsoever or being thrown out of the election, it makes this latter option extremely unlikely (and rightly so, as eliminating candidates should be an absolute last option). Perhaps keeping track of party violations and giving them a grade for how poorly they campaigned, and then putting this on the ballot next to them next year might work, although not for any independent candidates. Anyone else got an idea?Email This Post!